Czech army would help with immigrant crisis if more than 1,000 arrivals a day: minister

The Czech army and prison service will be called on to help the police tackle the immigration problem if the number of incoming refugees top 1,000 a day, Czech minister of interior Milan Chovanec said on Friday. Earlier, Chovanec said after a meeting with his Slovak counterpart Robert Kaliňák that both countries would oppose the proposal of EU set quotas of immigrants to be accepted by them. Even if they agreed the idea, immigrants would seek to move on to their target countries such as Germany or Sweden, Chovanec said. If Germany was willing to accept all Syrian refugees, then Czechs and Slovaks could arrange a rail corridor to the country, the Czech minister added. Germany would have to agree this with Hungary and Budapest would have to ensure that the travellers were really Syrians and not those claiming to be from the war ravaged country or with false passports from it, he addd.

Author: Chris Johnstone